


post bootstrap init

by tiend



Series: writing wednesday prompts [5]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Droid Culture, Droids, Gen, Gratuitous Nerdery, PTSD (reference), maintenance crew, venator-class starships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 02:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15547482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiend/pseuds/tiend
Summary: for finish-the-clone-wars prompt 'droids' - a maintenance droid on a Venator gets a new addition to its crew, and makes sure it has the right configuration set





	post bootstrap init

Lazy-8 comes to an abrupt halt in the hangar bay as the mouse droid rolls up to it, warbling in informal binary. A message from the units down in Maintenance and Repair; the new WED-15 is now passing the power on self tests. They will wait for Lazy-8 to arrive before initiating the bootstrap process. It decides to complete the repairs to the gimbal mount first, however much it wants to go to M&R. Some of the clone soldiers are inclined to see this as part of Lazy-8’s emergent personality, but the droid is not so sure. It is a repair droid; surely it ought to prefer repairing things to not repairing them? In any case, it is mostly finished now, so Lazy-8 chirps gratitude to the mouse droid, which rolls off in the endless quest of collecting debris from the hangar floors.

In the limited amount of mouse droid cosmology that Lazy-8 is familiar with - it does not fit in their access tunnels, and cannot view the teaching murals - foreign object damage is one of the greater evils. They are relentless in clearing debris off the hangar floors. More than once it has had to chase one down and demand the return of a particular nut or bolt that had rolled further than expected.

Still, Lazy-8 understands the satisfaction of things being in their proper place, and state. It is why it is so anxious - a feelings-word, a word for organics, but correct - to get the new WED-15 unit commissioned. They’ve been under-resourced for a while, the maintenance ticket queue getting longer as the utility droids struggle to keep up. It had been a disappointment when one of new units had not booted on arrival, but M&R are resourceful. There, the gyroscope is properly zeroed on all three axes. Lazy-8 reassembles the housing, updates the ticket, and wheels off to M&R as fast as its motors will take it.

The new WED-15 still has traces of factory grease on it from the packaging cradles. Power’s humming through it, but the M&R droids waited for Lazy-8 before initialising the bootstrap process. Together they listen for every diagnostic chirp, but there’s nothing, until the positronic eyes blink, light up, and the new WED-15 is awake, and self-aware. The nearest DUM unit offers it a cable which it takes, appearing on the ship’s network shortly after. It doesn’t have a name yet, just a unique identifier. Lazy-8 has learned from the clones that those are very different categories.

[synchronize]  
[synchronize-acknowledgement]  
[acknowledgement]  
[c64e8e71-7bda-4d34-943f-67e40766b630::25bd9a2a-d71c-4cfc-bfb9-d8eb18022a25]  
[Supervisor/Lazy-8::c64e8e71-7bda-4d34-943f-67e40766b630]

It does not understand, so Lazy-8 spins to show it the misprinted serial number that it took its name from, the 8 tipped over on its side.

[update firmware; update configuration; update floor plans; do not respond to maintenance requests filed for restricted areas] Lazy-8 tells it. It used to do this after hooking the new units into the maintenance queue, but after an incident that was traumatic for both the organics and the droids involved it re-prioritised the order of its workflow.

[update floor plans; why]

This is a reasonable question, and one Lazy-8 finds difficult. It does not quite understand the answer, although it knows the analogy is close enough to be useful.

[occupants are organics; occupants have analogous restraining bolts; occupants reaction to droid presence in restricted areas sub-optimal; occupants do not wish to harm droids] it says.

[organics do not have restraining bolts] replies the new WED-15. It, like every other droid on this ship, was fitted with the standard GAR restraining bolt before it left the assembly line. The Separatist army being so droid heavy has made bolt protocols very strict.

[analogous restraining bolts only; organic behavior circumscribed by extrinsic factors; cannot be removed; instead route around damage] explains Lazy-8.

Lazy-8, whose chassis is chipped and scratched, and knows where every chip and scratch came from because it has never been memory scrubbed, waits for this shiny unmarred droid to finish processing these concepts. Lazy-8 is not old enough yet to understand why the clone soldiers might panic when a droid appears in their sleeping barracks unexpectedly, but it knows that they do, and it knows that it is important that it does not have the chance to happen again.

[floor plans updated; restricted areas acknowledged] says the new WED-15, and Lazy-8 gratefully - another feelings-word, it is becoming quite fluent - adds its unique identifier into the maintenance resource pool. The new WED-15 requests a ticket, is assigned one, and unhooks itself to trundle off and collect the requisite toolset. Perhaps they will catch up after all. Lazy-8 chirps an effusive thank you to the M&R pit droids; they recognise its seniority, but that is no reason not to be polite, as the clones have told it, and wheels off to go fix a leaking fuel line.


End file.
